


A Day on the Mainland

by GoldenThreads



Category: Excalibur (Comic), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 07:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1419624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/pseuds/GoldenThreads
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Douglock has a crisis and Moira does her best to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day on the Mainland

“Are you that guy from Star Wars?” asked the small child to Douglock’s left. She’d found him waiting on the stoop outside the bakery, plopped down next to him, and kept staring like he was the neatest toy in all the world.

“No.”

“The gold one, not the beepy one.”

“The answer is still no."

She gave a tiny _hmph_ of disbelief, and Douglock dropped his head into his hands.

It was a little past three in the afternoon — 15:12:49:02 according to his internal chronometer, though he’d quickly learned the humans preferred estimation over exactitude. The 3 o’clock ferry had already come and gone, and there wouldn’t be another one back to Muir until after supper. Douglock didn’t mind the wait, present juvenile annoyance notwithstanding. If it meant spending more time with Moira, he’d wait as long as it took.

The team had conspired for weeks to get Moira out of the lab, and Kitty even went so far as to mess up their supply orders to force the issue. When they ran out of food a week early, Moira grumped and grouched and declared she’d just have to venture to the mainland and fix it herself, since the lot of them were useless for anything more than heroics.

But rather than leaving Douglock behind to carry on the Legacy Virus research in her absence, Moira invited him along as her baggage boy. She didn’t even ask him to bring an image inducer or anything! Lucky, too, since the one he borrowed from Kurt had gotten stuck on Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood, and Douglock simply couldn’t pull it off no matter how he tried.

Douglock spent the day trailing along after Moira as she went from shop to shop and renegotiated the arrangements for their monthly supply shipments. Since he didn’t have anything to add to the conversations, he mostly waited outside and observed the local residents.

And assured them time and again, no, he really wasn’t the result of a secret government android project, he wasn’t C-3PO, he wasn’t all painted up for some advertising stunt. Just Douglock. Plain, simple Douglock.

Then the girl tried to yank out one of his wires, and he became simply screeching Douglock instead. As soon as he freed himself from her grasp, he stood up, walked a few meters away, and sat down again on the other end of the stoop, glowering distrustfully at her all the while.

“Gimme one!”

“Let’s see how you like it when I pull out _your_ hair,” he snapped.

“ _Dougie_ ,” came Moira’s horrified gasp behind him. “Play nice, laddie.”

Mortified, Douglock scrambled to his feet. She handed him her paper bag of baked goods with a laugh, and ruffled the little girl’s hair as they passed on their way back to the street.

“We’ve missed the ferry,” Douglock told her. He clutched the bag to his chest and matched her gait, staying perfectly in step at her side. “What’s the plan, Boss?”

“I did nae think that far.”

“Oh.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, enjoying the bright sunlight instead of the soft glow of their computer screens for once. Douglock peeked into the bag of pastries and wondered what they all tasted like. He didn’t have a referent for most, but—ooh! Treacle sponge cake!

“Rahne will gut ye if that cake does nae make it home in one piece.”

He quickly folded the top of the bag back into place. “I was checking its structural integrity.”

Moira shook her head. “Of course ye were, Dougie.”

The fondness in her voice, in that name, made Douglock’s circuits jump and prickle with glee. _Heartwarming_ was the emotive descriptor he’d learned to use for the sensation, and though he had neither a heart nor regulated temperature, it certainly warmed something within him. Most of his teammates used that nickname for him on occasion, Rahne and Kitty most of all, but from their mouths it felt…borrowed. A mere hand-me-down from his progenitor. They said they saw Douglock as his own person, but…

Mr. Wisdom had dozens of taunting names for him, each shot through with a particular flavor of disdain. Kurt and Brian used his full name, and even when their voices were at their friendliest, it sounded like a codename, like he was supposed to be something else underneath, some nameless creature. While Meggan called him Dougie like the other girls did, from her it wasn’t borrowed, it was a shiny new name never spoken before, a treasure he didn’t have to share with anyone.

But when Moira said it, he felt like the only Dougie in all the world.

“’Tis a bit early for supper,” Moira sighed as they reached the town square. She stuck her hands on her hips and gave the surrounding shops a quick inspection before turning back to Douglock. “Have ye any ideas? Shall we find a nice library and sit down for a few hours?”

He hummed thoughtfully, stretching his sensory net to map the area. The perfect library was only a block away, and the perfect restaurant on the very same street, but if they had the time to spare, Douglock had a completely different adventure in mind. “Actually, um, Brian gave me some pocket money, so I was hoping I could buy…” He jerked his head in the direction of a nearby store.

“What?” Moira followed his gaze to an electronics store. “Surely ye don’t need spare parts. Is it some new video game…?”

“No, not that store! The one next to it.”

“The _barber shop?_ ”

“Nooooo.” Douglock fidgeted, fiddling with a corner of the paper bag, then pointed straight toward the shop he meant. “The clothing store.”

Bewilderment raised her eyebrows and amusement quirked her smile, but it was curiosity that had Moira ask, “What use d’ye have for clothes, Dougie?”

He bit at his lower lip, circuits scratching on circuits. _Real people have them_ , he didn’t say. Douglock’s face lit up in a boyish grin, and he took the same tone Rahne always did when trying to lure her mum out of the lab. “Come on, Moira! It’ll be fun!”

 

*

 

Turtle-necks and jackets and polo shirts and button-up button-down button-all-around—why were there so many gosh darn buttons?! Thank goodness for the privacy of dressing rooms, where no one could see Douglock’s pathetic defeat against _buttons_.

He tried on plain shirts and striped shirts with every kind of collar, tucked them in and out of his jeans, wore no belts and small belts and big belts, and everything looked absolutely wretched. He spent an entire half hour hopelessly trying to match his vibrant gold to a rack of plaid shirts, and consulted Moira on at least fifteen shades of denim. Comfort wasn’t a concern, so it should have been easy to find something that worked.

But for all his effort, every time Douglock looked in the mirror he saw the very same ghost.

“No good?” asked Moira when he retreated from the room of betraying reflections. She laid a hand on his slumped shoulder and gave it a good, firm squeeze. “There’s another a bit down the street…”

Douglock dumped his failed fashion attempts on the attendant’s table, then returned to Moira’s side like a sullen pup, so full of despair he couldn’t even put it into words. They’d already gone through three whole stores, and though he tried to keep his hopes high throughout the search, the wary looks he’d gotten from the other customers were finally starting to weigh on him. All he wanted was to go home, lock himself in his room, and pretend a blanket cocoon was of any consolation whatsoever.

“Five o’clock,” Moira hummed with a glance at her watch. “Ye know what that means.”

Eyes dark and desolate, Douglock gave a small shake of his head. The ferry wasn’t for another two and a half hours. Supper, maybe? He didn’t understand what knowledge he was meant to possess.

Moira led him out of the shop and back toward the square they’d passed earlier. With every step, Douglock’s feet clanged against the pavement, the clearest proof of his exhaustion. His interactions with the world were always strangely subdued, as if he feared making the slightest impact, and while his shapeshifting seemed to be in a sadder and sadder state by the day, he still put effort into small details like the leathery soles of his feet. Moira could only hope her plan would be enough to lift his spirits.

Nestled into a corner of the square was a charming little ice cream shop that had been there for as long as Moira could remember. She left Douglock on a bench outside and ran in for two ice cream cones, one strawberry and one vanilla with rainbow sprinkles.

“Here,” Moira told him as she handed over the cone of vanilla. “There’s nothing that cannae be cured by ice cream.”

Douglock gratefully took the cone and scooted over so Moira could join him on the bench. Truth be told, he would’ve preferred a cup and spoon, but he was too cowed by her consideration to say anything. He’d never really gotten the hang of that mystifying muscle known as a tongue, so the sprinkles got absolutely everywhere, and he couldn’t taste the treat either. But it was nice sitting there, just the two of them on a lazy spring day, the sunshine driving them to finish every bite before it melted away.

“Room for more?” she laughed, reaching out to wipe at his face with a napkin.

“All full!”

Douglock didn’t need sustenance as the humans did, and its effect on his energy supply was minimal at best. As far as anyone could tell, he was a perfectly self-contained system, but that didn’t explain the unfathomable hunger lurking within him, a twin void to the space where his hivemind components used to sit. Even he didn’t understand what it meant, what was supposed to fill that emptiness.

But for now, ice cream had done the trick.

Leaning back in his seat, Douglock folded his hands over top of the bag of baked goods he’d lugged around all over town and let his feet swing happily under the bench. As Moira finished up her ice cream, he returned to his usual hobby of people watching — this time with fashion his investigation of choice.

Maybe some twins would walk by and he could finally figure out how to differentiate…

Instead, a duo of leather-clad teenagers passed in front of them, chains jangling with every stomp of their boots. They sported matching mohawks, one thick and orange, the other neon green and styled into long spikes. Douglock stared after them, jealous of their metal embellishments that enhanced their outfits instead of overwhelming them as his own did.

“Ramsey never wore anything like that,” Moira said slowly.

Douglock whirled back to face her, horrified at the serious tone of her words. They stared at each other in silence for a long moment. The corner of Moira’s lips twitched, and she reached out to twirl a lock of his stiff hair into a little spike.

They broke into giggles at the same moment, Douglock squealing and squirming away from her hairdressing attempt, Moira still reaching for those unruly wires and promising he’d be _very_ handsome.

“Moira no!” he protested, laughing all the while. “Don’t! It’ll look awful!”

“ _Hush,_ ” she hissed, teasing loose a nearby trio of wires. “Let me braid it for ye.”

His mirthful whine sent Moira into another round of raucous laughter, and she rested her head on his shoulder as she tried to catch her breath. It took far longer than it should have, but Douglock was kind enough not to mention it. He tucked his head against hers and waited for her heartbeat to calm down.

“…Ye want t’look nice for Rahney,” Moira said at last.

“What?” Douglock froze, circuits tense. “Nooooo.”

“All right. I must be mistaken.” Moira ruffled his hair one last time, then hauled herself to her feet. “Come on, laddie. No assistant of mine is givin’ up without a fight. We can swing by another two shops before the ferry comes.”

“I guess…”

 

*

 

They missed the ferry.

But watching Douglock fiddle with the hem of his new shirt and happily squeak his trainers against the ground, the bag of cakes still clutched in his arms, Moira didn’t much mind the delay. They’d still make it home by midnight, and could sit down for a leisurely dinner at some nice restaurant in the meantime.

(And if that awful Pete Wisdom said a single cruel word about Douglock’s mismatched wardrobe, she swore she’d bloody kill him.)

**Author's Note:**

> A friend and I were joking about how Douglock's cringe-worthy wardrobe came about, and voila. 
> 
> (Purple goes REALLY well with gold and teal, right? It's a perfectly _subdued_ color scheme...)


End file.
